Attempted mugging P olly Peck, a company capitalised at £2 billion, went into administration. Asil Nadir condemned the tactics of the Serious Fraud Office and denied any illegal...

1706; Telex: 27124; Fax: 071-242 0603 TRUST IN PARLIAMENT I t is the job of politicians to speak for the people. Sometimes they must wonder why they bother. Even Mrs Thatcher...

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The ideal choice of leader for the 'No Notion' Conservatives NOEL MALCOLM T he latest murmurings about a lead- ership challenge to Mrs Thatcher amount to very little; and they...

T he sacking of the two British Midland pilots whose tragic blunder precipitated the M1 air disaster inspires some reflections on the shifting sands of media enthusiasm. The...

The insuperable problems of putting a price on everything AUBERON WAUGH E nvy is a sterile and odious emotion which we should avoid in ourselves and punish severely in others....

Vicki Woods thinks the Government is half right in enforcing maintenance for single mothers, but that they manage these things better in Iceland FIFTEEN years ago, the...

Mark Almond on the reconciliation of Rumania's intellectuals and the workers who beat them up ONE face was missing from the array of East European heroes feted at last month's...

A SHOCKING murder has this week attracted the attention of all London. On Friday se'nnight, the body of a woman, aged thirty, was found in Crossfield Road, South Hampstead, with...

James Bowman on the black Democratic challenger to Jesse Helms Winston-Salem, North Carolina IF YOU can name two serving United States senators, chances are that Jesse Helms...

Michael Heath

In the new Germany, Ian Buruma writes, intellectuals on the Left and Right have lost their postwar roles Berlin THE new Germany is a country of ironies. Take the following...

Shiva Naipaul was one of the most gifted and accomplished writers of our time. After his death in August 1985 at the age of 40, The Spectator set up a fund to establish an...

John Keegan on the deaths by accident and 'friendly fire' which always occur in war WHEN the history of the Gulf crisis comes to be written, historians may well seize upon...

Diane Kunz thinks that the Chancellor's misleading information during the Suez crisis may have paid off DURING the Suez crisis of 1956, when Britain last confronted a Middle...

Barbara Arnie! finds herself with a difficult problem of etiquette IT WAS so kind of Taki, The Spectator's `High life' columnist, to invite me to his grand ball at the Savoy...

Terence Kealey is amazed that his research on baldness has caused such a stir WE SCIENTISTS are shy, mole-like crea- tures. From the security of the laboratory we peer at a...

persist . . CHRONIC schizophrenics have a symp- tom which the Americans call anhedonia, an inability to derive pleasure or enjoy- ment from anything, and from which is said to...

at the defeat of the high priests and the television triumphalists WITH the Broadcasting Bill at last wearily wending its way onto the statute book, I must congratulate the...

THE most pressing questions about Polly Peck are being addressed to its auditors, Stoy Hayward, who six months ago said that the accounts gave a true and fair view. Stoy,...

LIKE the first cuckoo in autumn, the first correspondent has surfaced to say that all her life savings are in Polly Peck and isn't the City a terrible place? All of them?...

ARE you pro-Europe? It always strikes me as the same sort of question as: would you like your daughter to marry an Old Harro- vian? The right answer to both questions is: which...

A RECURRENT argument for the cur- rency bloc is founded on fear. We are told that if sterling is left out, all the money and capital markets will move into the new bloc, and...

No more pocket boroughs at Lloyd's of London, so throw the rascals out CHRISTOPHER I- ILDES P olling day looms at Lloyd's of Lon- don. Members must vote for two candi- dates...

Sir: During the past few months we have received admonition on the state of British beaches from the European Community's Italian environment minister while Italian cities...

Sir: The article by Sandra Barwick (Not waving but praying', 20 October) contains what I believe is a palpable error. The article states that our new Archbishop, Dr Carey, in an...

Sir: Since 1978 The Spectator has given more extensive coverage than any other journal to the long-running controversy over the repatriations from Austria in 1945. But I am...

Sir: I was surprised to find that the editor of the Daily Telegraph (Diary, 20 October) thinks that the crisis in education can be solved by paying teachers more than £16,000 a...

Sir: Auberon Waugh's comments regard- ing South Africa (`So it is the punishment freaks who are leading us by the nose', 22 September), are spot on. The moralists do need South...

Sir: I am sending this letter to complain about one of the most infuriating and disgusting articles I remember reading in your magazine (20 October). This is 'If symptoms...

Sir: At last I've cottoned on (dread phrase!). Wallace Arnold is a puzzle set by Doc — totally incomprehensible. Cheryl Brigg Barnet, South Chailey, East Sussex

Sir: In an article, Mind your manors! (9 June) your correspondent, John Martin Robinson, refers to a ruling by the Adver- tising Standards Authority (ASA) in re- spect of the...

Sir: May I be permitted to offer my sincere apologies to all concerned for having so wantonly misled your readers in my letter last week (27 October). This time it was not your...

Sir: 'They remind me of Wales on a wet Sunday afternoon.' What an evocative but perhaps tendentious brush-stroke! Theo- dore Dalrymple (`If symptoms per- sist . . . , 13...

Sir: I refer to your recent interview with Lord Denning (`England, his England', 18 August). I have read with admiration the biography of Lord Denning. He clearly is a great man...

Mystery of the young passenger John Mortimer THE INVISIBLE WOMAN: THE STORY OF NELLY TERNAN AND CHARLES DICKENS • by Claire Tomalin Viking, £16.99, pp. 317 A lady who had...

Francis King STARES by Roy Fuller Sinclair-Stevenson, £12.95, pp. 202 S ince the narrator, William Toyne, of Roy Fuller's fine new novel, his first for 20 years, is a...

Alan Watkins LISTENING FOR A MIDNIGHT TRAM by John Junor Chapmans, £15.95, pp. 341 S ir John Junor is one of the great journalists of the age. He was and is a better columnist...

Digby Anderson COLLINS SUPERSCALE ATLAS BRITAIN NEW EDITION Collins, f12.95, pp. 225 COLLINS ROAD ATLAS BRITAIN 1991 Collins, f5.99, pp. 139 BARTHOLEMEW-ROAD ATLAS BRITAIN...

Celestria Noel REDEMPTION by Tariq All Chatto & Windus, £13.99, pp. 281 TEACHING LITTLE FANG by Mark Swallow Macmillan, f12.99, pp. 256 LIVES OF THE SAINTS by Nino Ricci...

Brian Masters THE FABER BOOK OF BLUE VERSE edited by John Whitworth Faber, £14.99, pp. 224 I t was Walpole who said that he always talked bawdy after dinner, because then...

Francis Wheen SINGULAR ENCOUNTERS by Naim Attallah Quartet, f15, pp. 628 L ong before the phrase 'positive discri- mination' had been coined, the owner of Quartet Books, Naim...

Phillip Knightley KGB: THE INSIDE STORY by Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky Hodder & Stoughton, £20, pp. 704 T he origins of this important book are almost as...

Andrew Clifford THE ROLLING STONE STORY by Robert Draper Mainstream Publishing, f9.99, pp. 389 T he story of Rolling Stone magazine, America's most popular and in many ways...

Ian Hislop MEMOIRS OF A LIBEL LAWYER by Peter Carter-Ruck Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f20, pp. 293 t one point Carter-Ruck describes an A old libel action in which he...

Crafts Perfect on paper D o geniuses get overlooked in the art world? No, argues Alan Bowness in a recent Walter Neurath lecture. He believes that there is a whole series of...

Chagall to Kitaj: Jewish Experience in 20th Century Art (Barbican Art Gallery till 6 January) Elusive archetype Giles Auty T he current exhibition at the Barbican sets out to...

Five Guys Named Moe (Stratford East) Mein Kampf: Farce (Riverside) Good fun and bad satire Christopher Edwards T he purpose behind Clarke Peters' musical is to celebrate the...

Vision of devilry Rupert Christiansen A ny new opera by a British composer becomes also 'Brittish' in some degree, the critics ranged like so many Beckmessers ready to slate...

Korczak ('PG', Curzon Phoenix) London Film Festival (Selected cinemas) A secular sainthood Hilary Mantel I f I were an ambitious young film-maker I would be hoping to skip...

regular critics MUSIC The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, from 22 November. One of the themes is 'Romania and the Baltic States', featuring folk music from the...

Soured fantasy Martyn Harris N early everyone must have stayed at The Green Man (BBC1, 9.05 p.m., Sun- day) at one time or other. The food is pretentious, the wine is...

Hellenic heroics Taki ast week marked the 50th anniversary of modern Greece's finest hour, better known to us Hellenes as OXI day, or no, you shall not pass, as answered by...

Thin walls Jeffrey Bernard This person then goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on for tea. It would be an exaggeration to say that I could hear how many teaspoons of tea...

Donor kebab Zenga Longmore y 14-month-old daughter, Omalara, is already showing signs of emulating her illustrious Uncle Abbas, the architect. The other day she designed a...

A sip for the rich and a sop for the poor Auberon Waugh I t is fitting that the 100th offer of the Spectator Wine Club since its launching in November 1982, should return to...

do Averys of Bristol Ltd. 7 Park Street, Bristol, BS1 5NG. Telephone: (0272) 214141 Price No. Value 1. (White) 295 Vina Undurraga Sauvignon Blanc 1990 12 hots. 37.80 2. (Red)...

know we all thought that for the last ten years it has never been out of it, but this is not, we now learn, so. What we thought was the decade of conspi- cuous consumption was...

The Spectator 1991 diary is now sold out. We regret the offer is closed. Diaries without initials are being sent out now; those with initials will take a little longer. If...

Impatience Raymond Keene B efore the world championship match several commentators were predicting a heavy victory for Kasparov, in the order of a three to four point margin....

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY COMPETITION evAVAS REGAL 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY Keats and Chapman Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1649 you were in- vited to try your hand at a...

A sonnet, please, in the style of a well- known English poet, addressed to Saddam Hussein. Entries to 'Competition No. 1652' by 16 November.

'14 0 2 R 4 TfirStRTH_IZG .. _9: 1 §:H 11 . 1 1 51EIW 1_1,_ o _. v , E 1) R P 1 A G T 0 jil I 031 pH 14_ . D ilk L_ _ T J•11 . 1% .. A C R E T A I t V I 4 0 ED...E R1111 UI N...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

Racing demons Frank Keating MERCIFULLY, the banshee din of Grand Prix cars won't be juddering Sunday after- noon television sets for a'few months. The snarling racers (the...